Transcript Holocaust_Council-Nov-15 2016

John Cox
[email protected]
Director, Center for Holocaust,
Genocide & Human Rights Studies
UNC Charlotte
my pages:
google “John cox typepad” or “john
cox academia uncc”
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German Jews were powerful and constituted a large segment of the
population before 1933
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“The Holocaust started the day that Hitler took power” (Jan. 1933)
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Jewish people were the only victims
› (and Jewish victims were mostly German)
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Jews are a “race”
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Those who defied Hitler would be immediately arrested, executed
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How could it happen? Must be related to “German national character”
or to something unique in German history
›
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Related to this: it was a purely “German” crime
Hitler had a Jewish grandmother or –father, or there is something “Jewish”
in his past that explains his animosity
Unfortunately, it was impossible for the Jews to resist
Martin Luther, “Against
the Jews and their Lies,”
mid-16th century
Allegations of deicide
Matthew 27:25: after Pilate “washes
his hands,” the Jewish crowd
declares “His blood shall be on us
and on our children”
Social crisis and/or religious zeal:
First Crusade
“Black death,” mid-14th century
1492: Spain
Racial theories, racism
of 19th/early 20th
centuries
 Dreyfus Affair
 “The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion”
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He wrote to fellow officers:
“The exercise of violence with
crass terrorism and with cruelty
is my policy. I annihilate the
rebellious tribes with streams of
blood…. Only on this seed can
something new emerge that
will remain”
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After the genocide, von Trotha
wrote a public statement in a
local (Southwest African)
newspaper that proclaimed
that, while in earlier stages of
colonization the Europeans
needed the labor of the
natives, but that “later they
must disappear” to make room
for European settlers and in
accord with the “law of the
survival of the fittest.”
I, the great General of the
German soldiers, address this letter
to the Herero people….
The Herero are no longer German
subjects…. The Herero people
must … leave the land. If the
populace does not do this I will
force them with the cannon.
Within the German borders every
Herero, with or without a gun, with
or without cattle, will be shot. I will
no longer accept women and
children, I will drive them back to
their people or I will let them be
shot at.
1867, prominent British writer and theologian: “They are without a past
and without a future, doomed … to a rapid, an entire, and, perhaps for
the highest destinies of mankind, an inevitable extinction.”
They pass through the world “learning nothing, inventing nothing,
improving nothing,” and their disappearance will leave “no trace of
their existence” beyond their physical remains.
NC governor Charles Aycock, acceptance speech for nomination,
1900: “When we say that the negro is unfit to rule we carry it one step
further and convey the correct idea when we declare that he is unfit to
vote”
British prime minister Lord Robert Cecil, 1898: “One can roughly divide
the nations of the world into the living and the dying.”
U.S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE, 1910: “The future of the Negro lies more in
the research laboratory than in the schools.”
Winston Churchill, 1919: “I do not understand the squeamishness about
the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against
uncivilised tribes.”
“The exacerbated nationalism and biological racism of the Nazis were closely
linked to the culture and practice of imperialism that had characterized
the whole of Europe since the beginning of the 19th century.
“Germany had not played a leading role in this development. On the contrary,
it was a latecomer, a keen pupil following the two great colonial powers,
France and Britain.
The natural supremacy of the white race and its corollary;
Europe’s civilizing mission in Africa and Asia;
the view of the world beyond Europe as a vast area to be colonized;
the idea of colonial wars as conflicts in which the enemy was the civilian
population of the countries to be conquered, rather than an army;
the theory that the extinction of the inferior races was an inevitable
consequence of progress:
these central tenets of Nazi ideology were commonplaces of 19thcentury European culture.”
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The only one who has benefited from the Revolution [of 1789] is the Jew.
Everything comes from the Jew; everything returns to the Jew…..
The methods are different, the result is the same. One can recognize all the
characteristics of a conquest: an entire population working for another
population, which appropriates, through a vast system of financial
exploitation, all of the profits of the other. Immense Jewish fortunes, castles,
Jewish townhouses, are not the fruit of any actual labor, of any production:
they are the booty taken from an enslaved race by a dominant race.
It is certain, for example, that the Rothschild family, whose French branch
alone possesses a declared fortune of three billion [francs], did not have that
money when it arrived in France; it has invented nothing, it has discovered
no mine, it has tilled no ground….
Now, since almost all newspapers and A organs of publicity in France are in
the hands of Jews or belong to them indirectly….
The Aryan, roused from his slumbers, decides, not without reason, that once
this so precious tolerance-talked about so much for the last hundred years-is
interpreted in this way, it is better to strike back than be struck….
The fatherland . . . has no meaning for the Semite.
“The exacerbated nationalism and biological racism of the Nazis were closely
linked to the culture and practice of imperialism that had characterized the
whole of Europe since the beginning of the 19th century.
“Germany had not played a leading role in this development. On the contrary, it
was a latecomer, a keen pupil following the two great colonial powers, France
and Britain.
The natural supremacy of the white race and its corollary;
Europe’s civilizing mission in Africa and Asia;
the view of the world beyond Europe as a vast area to be colonized;
the idea of colonial wars as conflicts in which the enemy was the civilian
population of the countries to be conquered, rather than an army;
the theory that the extinction of the inferior races was an inevitable consequence
of progress:
these central tenets of Nazi ideology were commonplaces of 19th-century
European culture.”
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10 million soldiers dead, 22 million injured
Political upheaval: what was the purpose….
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Germany:
› Disillusionment; brutalization, cheapening of life
›
›
›
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“stab-in-the-back”
Revolution; Freikorps
Article 231; reparations
Unstable “Weimar Republic”
German revolution of November 1918
Henry Ford receiving medal from
German diplomats, 1938
By 1922, The International Jew was already in
its 21st printing in Germany. Published in
Leipzig, 1922.
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum
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humble origins, 1919-20, Munich
One of many small, ultra-right nationalist groups
Hitler, putsch, Mein Kampf
Ideology:
› “anti-capitalism,” anti-Semitism, anti-Communism
› Drew upon centuries of reactionary European ideas
› Fascism: Italy (Mussolini)
 Authoritarian; ultra-nationalist; cult of leader; cult of violence;
emphasis on action; racist
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Membership
› By late ’20s, middle class, support from some industrialists
Adolf Hitler, Julius Streicher (foreground, right), and
Hermann Goering (left of Hitler) retrace the steps of the
1923 Beer Hall Putsch (coup). Munich, Germany,
November 9, 1934.
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Elections ’30-32: polarization reflected in results
 Hindenburg’s fateful decision: Jan. 30, 1933
 Conservative elites underestimated the “drummer boy” : “He is
now in our employ!”
 Hitler’s appeal:
national redemption;
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Volksgemeinschaft
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Depression
Yearning for stability among much of populace
› End of class warfare; appeal of Nazi “racial community”
Mass unemployment
› Management offensive; KPD gains support
From parliamentary to presidential regime
› Procession of conservative presidents
›
12 minutes/BBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26XsANjgjU
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Hitler’s intentions vs. delusions of Hindenburg, others
Feb. 3 speech to generals:
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“extermination” of Marxism
“Lebensraum”
Reichstag Fire
The “Enabling Act”
› March 23
Volksgemeinschaft
Part I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTeIu2mMeuA
Rise of Hitler 10 minutes part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26XsANjgjU
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SA, Gestapo terror
› 100,000 arrested in first months of ’33
› Continuity with 1920s; post-war brutalization of politics
KPD, SPD banned
› ½ the KPD’s members spent time in camps; 20,000
murdered
Trade unions broken up
March 6, 1933
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Dachau, Buchenwald
Eventually 42,000 camps
› Concentration, labor, death camps
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Initial victims: political
Opponents (Left parties)
Dachau, April 1945
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“Night of the Long Knives,” June 1934
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Ernst Röhm and the SA
“national revolution”
Conservative opposition also targeted
Widespread acceptance of the bloodbath
Death of Hindenburg, August 1934
 Hitler appointed “Führer” and chancellor of the Reich
 Nazi decision-making; “working toward the Führer”
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› Rare cabinet meetings, and none after 1938
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“race and space”
›
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(Doris Bergen)
Ratzel: Lebensraum
525,000 Jews in Germany in 1933
 April 1, 1933 boycott
 April 7 “Law for Restoration of Professional Civil Service”
 1935 Nuremburg Laws
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› Earlier “civic death”; now, “social death”
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“bureaucratic momentum” – “Jewish experts”
Pretty good/ 10 minutes, KI’nach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpdJhA5aJkA
› BBC/ anti-Jewish propaganda/4 minutes:
› http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGNyc_LlJhs
Remilitarization of Rhineland ‘36
 Spanish civil war
 Austria: Anschluss, March 1938
 Czechoslovakia: Sept/Oct ‘38
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appeasement
 Aug. 23, 1939 Non-aggression pact
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Poland: largest Jewish population in Europe
 “General government,” Lublin
 Hitler faces stalemate: now controls large Jewish populations
 Wannsee conference (Jan. 1942)
 Einsatzgruppen
 Gas vans – Chelmno
 Death camps, Zyklon B
› Auschwitz
› All six death camps were in Poland (Auschwitz, Belzec,
Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka)
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German victories, occupations
› September 1939: Poland
› 1940: France, Denmark, Norway
› 1940-41: Greece, Yugoslavia
› June 1941: invasion of USSR
› “ethnic cleansing”
› Slave labor
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Poland: colonial and racial war
Barbarossa: “battle of world views”
“Whether nations live in prosperity
of starve to death interests me only
insofar as we need them for slaves .
. . Otherwise, it is of no interest to
me.” – Himmler, speech at Posen,
October 1943
“Our guiding principle must be
that these people have but one
justification for existence—to be
of use to use economically.” –
Hitler, April 1942
The program’s task was to murder the Jews who were trapped in the
General Government.
Operation Reinhard entailed the construction of four additional death
camps—Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
Two million Jews perished in “Operation Reinhard,” most of them
during the most intensive period of the Holocaust:
Between early 1942 and early 1943, roughly half the Nazis’ Jewish
victims were murdered.
turning point: Stalingrad Jan. ’43, Kursk summer ‘43
 Allies advancing on both fronts
 “Nero Order” March 19
 Goebbels: symbol of decay, demise of the 3rd Reich
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Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all
around us, in the air. The plague has
died away, but the infection still
lingers….
Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse
and cynical indifference to the
suffering of others, abdication of the
intellect and of moral sense to the
principle of authority,
and above all, at the root of
everything, a sweeping tide of
cowardice which masks itself as …
love of country and faith in an idea.”
– Primo Levi
Jews
 5.9 million
Soviet POWs
 3 – 3.5 million
Ethnic Poles
 1.8–2 million
Soviet civilians
 4.5 – 8 m.; 12-14 m.
total killed
Romani
 220,000–1,000,000
Disabled
 200,000–250,000
Homosexuals
 5,000–15,000
Jehovah's
Witnesses
 2,500–5,000